Support This Blog

Warning: Missing argument 1 for PayPalDonations::paypalShortcode(), called in /home/chernavsky/blog.sethroberts.net/wp-content/themes/basic/sidebar-left.php on line 8 and defined in /home/chernavsky/blog.sethroberts.net/wp-content/plugins/paypal-donations/paypal-donations.php on line 239

Heather Brooke TED talk about exposing government corruption. The current “information enlightenment,” says Brooke, is “about searching for the truth, not because somebody says it’s true, “because I say so.” No, it’s about trying to find the truth based on what you can see and what can be tested. That, in the first Enlightenment, led to questions about the right of kings, the divine right of kings to rule over people, or that women should be subordinate to men, or that the Church was the official word of God.”

Alcohol is bad for your liver, we’re told. However, moderate amounts may be good for your liver. A recent meta-analysis found that men who drank moderate amounts of alcohol had considerably less risk (a risk ratio of 0.3) of liver cirrhosis than men who drank no alcohol. It wasn’t clear if some forms of alcohol (e.g., wine) were more protective than others. I came across this study because another article called the association “biologically implausible”, whereas I think it is highly plausible due to vast experimental literature on hormesis (animals given small amounts of poisons are healthier than animals given none).

The findings about cirrhosis join a much large body of evidence that moderate drinking is associated with less heart disease. A recent meta-analysis reached this conclusion once again and found, in addition, that moderate drinking is associated with less all-cause mortality.

These are more examples of the health benefits of fermented foods, one of my favorite subjects. It is unfortunate the liquor industry does not run long-term human experiments on the effects of moderate amounts of beer, wine, and so on.